Management Commentary

The IASB met on 9 December 2024 to discuss targeted refinements to its proposals for a revised IFRS Practice Statement 1 Management Commentary.

Targeted refinements—Areas of content and related topics (Agenda Paper 15A)

The IASB tentatively decided to acknowledge, in the main body of the revised Practice Statement, that an entity’s management commentary provides material information about governance-related matters as necessary to meet:

1. the overall objective of management commentary; and
2. the disclosure objectives for the areas of content in management commentary.

All 14 IASB members agreed with this decision.

The IASB also discussed:

1. the location of requirements relating to the opportunities that management has chosen to pursue, and why an exemption for commercially sensitive information is unnecessary in the context of the requirements in the revised Practice Statement; and
2. an overview of how requirements and guidance in the revised Practice Statement relate to IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, specifically requirements and guidance on:
   1. areas of content; and
   2. information about long-term prospects, intangible resources and relationships, and environmental, social and governance matters.

The IASB was not asked to make any decisions.

Targeted refinements—Terminology and supporting explanations (Agenda Paper 15B)

The IASB tentatively decided:

1. to align the terminology used for the attributes of useful information with the terminology used in the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting;
2. to retain the plain language used in the supporting explanations of these attributes;
3. to replace the term ‘investors and creditors’ with the term ‘primary users of general purpose financial reports’;
4. to clarify the relationship between an entity’s ability to create value for itself—and therefore to generate cash flows—and the value the entity’s activities might create, preserve or erode for other parties, the economy and the natural environment across all time horizons, including in the long term; and
5. to remove the observation that some people refer to the value an entity creates for itself as ‘enterprise value’.

All 14 IASB members agreed with this decision.

Targeted refinements—Coherence (Agenda Paper 15C)

The IASB tentatively decided:

1. to clarify that the notion of coherence includes effectively representing the connections between various matters;
2. to specify that the notion of coherence extends to coherence between information in an entity’s management commentary and in its other general purpose financial reports, which include its financial statements and its sustainability-related financial disclosures, if those disclosures are provided outside the management commentary; and
3. to include the requirements and guidance on the notion of coherence in a separate chapter in the revised Practice Statement.

All 14 IASB members agreed with this decision.

Due process steps (Agenda Paper 15D)

The IASB considered the re-exposure criteria in the Due Process Handbook. The IASB decided to issue the revised Practice Statement without re-exposing its proposals.

All 14 IASB members confirmed they were satisfied the IASB has complied with the applicable due process requirements and has undertaken sufficient consultation and analysis to begin the process for balloting the revised Practice Statement. No member indicated an intention to dissent from issuing the revised Practice Statement.